Anti-satellite missile
tests, like this one conducted by the U.S. Navy in February
2008, are part of a worrisome march toward military conflict
in outer space.

China, Russia and the U.S. are developing and testing controversial new
capabilities to wage war in space despite their denial of such work.

The
world’s most worrisome military flashpoint is arguably not in the
Strait of Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, Iran, Israel, Kashmir or
Ukraine. In fact, it cannot be located on any map of Earth, even
though it is very easy to find. To see it, just look up into a
clear sky, to the no-man’s-land of Earth orbit, where a conflict
is unfolding that is an arms race in all but name.

The emptiness of outer space might be the last place you’d
expect militaries to vie over contested territory, except that
outer space isn’t so empty anymore. About 1,300 active satellites
wreathe the globe in a crowded nest of orbits, providing worldwide
communications, GPS navigation, weather forecasting and planetary
surveillance. For militaries that rely on some of those satellites
for modern warfare, space has become the ultimate high ground,
with the U.S. as the undisputed king of the hill. Now, as China
and Russia aggressively seek to challenge U.S. superiority in
space with ambitious military space programs of their own, the
power struggle risks sparking a conflict that could cripple the
entire planet’s space-based infrastructure. And though it might
begin in space, such a conflict could easily ignite full-blown war
on Earth.

The long-simmering tensions are now approaching a boiling point
due to several events, including recent and ongoing tests of
possible anti-satellite weapons by China and Russia, as well as
last month’s failure of tension-easing talks at the United
Nations.

Testifying before Congress earlier this year, Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper echoed the concerns held by
many senior government officials about the growing threat to U.S.
satellites, saying that China and Russia are both “developing
capabilities to deny access in a conflict,” such as those that
might erupt over China’s military activities in the South China
Sea or Russia’s in Ukraine. China in particular, Clapper said, has
demonstrated “the need to interfere with, damage and destroy” U.S.
satellites, referring to a series of Chinese anti-satellite
missile tests that began in 2007.

There are many ways to disable or destroy satellites beyond
provocatively blowing them up with missiles. A spacecraft could
simply approach a satellite and spray paint over its optics, or
manually snap off its communications antennas, or destabilize its
orbit. Lasers can be used to temporarily disable or permanently
damage a satellite’s components, particularly its delicate
sensors, and radio or microwaves can jam or hijack transmissions
to or from ground controllers.

In response to these possible threats, the Obama administration
has budgeted at least $5 billion to be spent over the next five
years to enhance both the defensive and offensive capabilities of
the U.S. military space program. The U.S. is also attempting to
tackle the problem through diplomacy, although with minimal
success; in late July at the United Nations, long-awaited
discussions stalled on a European Union-drafted code of conduct
for spacefaring nations due to opposition from Russia, China and
several other countries including Brazil, India, South Africa and
Iran. The failure has placed diplomatic solutions for the growing
threat in limbo, likely leading to years of further debate within
the UN’s General Assembly.

“The bottom line is the United States does not want conflict in
outer space,” says Frank Rose, assistant secretary of state for
arms control, verification and compliance, who has led American
diplomatic efforts to prevent a space arms race. The U.S., he
says, is willing to work with Russia and China to keep space
secure. “But let me make it very clear: we will defend our space
assets if attacked.”

Offensive space weapons tested

The prospect of war in space is not new. Fearing Soviet nuclear
weapons launched from orbit, the U.S. began testing anti-satellite
weaponry in the late 1950s. It even tested nuclear bombs in space
before orbital weapons of mass destruction were banned through the
United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty of 1967. After the ban,
space-based surveillance became a crucial component of the Cold
War, with satellites serving as one part of elaborate
early-warning systems on alert for the deployment or launch of
ground-based nuclear weapons. Throughout most of the Cold War, the
U.S.S.R. developed and tested “space mines,” self-detonating
spacecraft that could seek and destroy U.S. spy satellites by
peppering them with shrapnel. In the 1980s, the militarization of
space peaked with the Reagan administration’s multibillion-dollar
Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed Star Wars, to develop orbital
countermeasures against Soviet intercontinental ballistic
missiles. And in 1985, the U.S. Air Force staged a clear
demonstration of its formidable capabilities, when an F-15 fighter
jet launched a missile that took out a failing U.S. satellite in
low-Earth orbit.

Through it all, no full-blown arms race or direct conflicts
erupted. According to Michael Krepon, an arms-control expert and
co-founder of the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C.,
that was because both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. realized how
vulnerable their satellites were—particularly the ones in
“geosynchronous” orbits of about 35,000 kilometers or more. Such
satellites effectively hover over one spot on the planet, making
them sitting ducks. But because any hostile action against those
satellites could easily escalate to a full nuclear exchange on
Earth, both superpowers backed down. “Neither one of us signed a
treaty about this,” Krepon says. “We just independently came to
the conclusion that our security would be worse off if we went
after those satellites, because if one of us did it, then the
other guy would, too.”

Today, the situation is much more complicated. Low- and
high-Earth orbits have become hotbeds of scientific and commercial
activity, filled with hundreds upon hundreds of satellites from
about 60 different nations. Despite their largely peaceful
purposes, each and every satellite is at risk, in part because not
all members of the growing club of military space powers are
willing to play by the same rules—and they don’t have to, because
the rules remain as yet unwritten.

Space junk is the greatest threat. Satellites race through
space at very high velocities, so the quickest, dirtiest way to
kill one is to simply launch something into space to get in its
way. Even the impact of an object as small and low-tech as a
marble can disable or entirely destroy a billion-dollar satellite.
And if a nation uses such a “kinetic” method to destroy an
adversary’s satellite, it can easily create even more dangerous
debris, potentially cascading into a chain reaction
that transforms Earth orbit into a demolition derby.

In 2007 the risks from debris skyrocketed when China launched a
missile that destroyed one of its own weather satellites in
low-Earth orbit. That test generated a swarm of long-lived
shrapnel that constitutes nearly one-sixth of all the radar-trackable
debris in orbit. The U.S. responded in kind in 2008, repurposing a
ship-launched anti-ballistic missile to shoot down a
malfunctioning U.S. military satellite shortly before it tumbled
into the atmosphere. That test produced dangerous junk too, though
in smaller amounts, and the debris was shorter-lived because it
was generated at a much lower altitude.

More recently, China has launched what many experts say are
additional tests of ground-based anti-satellite kinetic weapons.
None of these subsequent launches have destroyed satellites, but
Krepon and other experts say this is because the Chinese are now
merely testing to miss, rather than to hit, with the same hostile
capability as an end result. The latest test occurred on July 23
of last year. Chinese officials insist the tests’ only purpose is
peaceful missile defense and scientific experimentation. But one
test in May 2013 sent a missile soaring as high as 30,000
kilometers above Earth, approaching the safe haven of strategic
geosynchronous satellites.

That was a wake-up call, says Brian Weeden, a security analyst
and former Air Force officer who studied and helped publicize the
Chinese test. “The U.S. came to grips decades ago with the fact
that its lower orbit satellites could easily be shot down,” Weeden
says. “Going nearly to geosynchronous made people realize that,
holy cow, somebody might actually try to go after the stuff we
have up there.”

It was no coincidence that shortly after the May 2013 test, the
US declassified details of its secret Geosynchronous Space
Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), a planned set of four
satellites capable of monitoring the Earth’s high orbits and even
rendezvousing with other satellites to inspect them up-close. The
first two GSSAP spacecraft launched into orbit in July 2014.

“This used to be a black program—something that didn’t even
officially exist,” Weeden says. “It was declassified to basically
send a message saying, ‘Hey, if you’re doing something funky in
and around the geosynchronous belt, we’re going to see.’” An
interloper into geosynchronous orbit need not be an
explosives-tipped missile to be a security risk—even sidling up to
an adversary’s strategic satellites is considered a threat. Which
is one reason that potential U.S. adversaries might be alarmed by
the rendezvous capabilities of GSSAP and of the U.S. Air Force’s
highly maneuverable X-37B robotic space planes.

Russia is also developing its own ability to approach, inspect
and potentially sabotage or destroy satellites in orbit. Over the
past two years, it has included three mysterious payloads in
otherwise routine commercial satellite launches, with the latest
occurring in March of this year. Radar observations by the U.S.
Air Force and by amateur hobbyists revealed that after each
commercial satellite was deployed, an additional small object flew
far away from the jettisoned rocket booster, only to later turn
around and fly back. The objects, dubbed Kosmos-2491, -2499 and
-2504, might just be part of an innocuous program developing
techniques to service and refuel old satellites, Weeden says,
though they could also be meant for more sinister intentions.

Treaties offer little assurance

Chinese officials maintain that their military activities in space
are simply peaceful science experiments, while Russian officials
have stayed mostly mum. Both nations could be seen as simply
responding to what they see as the U.S.’s clandestine development
of potential space weapons. Indeed, the U.S.’s ballistic missile
defense systems, its X-37B space planes and even its GSSAP
spacecraft, though all ostensibly devoted to maintaining peace,
could be easily repurposed into weapons of space war. For years
Russia and China have pushed for the ratification of a legally
binding United Nations treaty banning space weapons—a treaty that
U.S. officials and outside experts have repeatedly rejected as a
disingenuous nonstarter.

“The draft treaty from Russia and China seeks to ban the very
things that they are so actively pursuing,” Krepon says. “It
serves their interests perfectly. They want freedom of action, and
they’re covering that with this proposal to ban space weapons.”
Even if the treaty was being offered in good faith, Krepon says,
“it would be dead on arrival” in Congress and would stand no
chance of being ratified. After all, the U.S. wants freedom of
action in space, too, and in space no other country has more
capability—and thus more to lose.

According to Rose, there are three key problems with the
treaty. “One, it’s not effectively verifiable, which the Russians
and Chinese admit,” he says. “You can’t detect cheating. Two, it
is totally silent on the issue of terrestrial anti-satellite
weapons, like the ones that China tested in 2007 and again in July
2014. And third, it does not define what a weapon in outer space
is.”

As an alternative, the U.S. supports a European-led initiative
to establish “norms” for proper behavior through the creation of a
voluntary International Code of Conduct for Outer Space. This
would be a first step, to be followed by a binding agreement. A
draft of the code—which Russia and China prevented from being
adopted in last month’s UN discussions—calls for more transparency
and “confidence-building” between spacefaring nations as a way of
promoting the “peaceful exploration and use of outer space.” This,
it is hoped, can prevent the generation of more debris and the
further development of space weapons. However, like the
Russian-Chinese treaty, the code does not exactly define what
constitutes a “space weapon.”

That haziness poses problems for senior defense officials such
as General John Hyten, the head of the U.S. Air Force Space
Command. “Is our space-based surveillance system that looks out at
the heavens and tracks everything in geosynchronous a weapons
system?” he asks. “I think everybody in the world would look at
that and say no. But it’s maneuverable, it’s going 17,000 miles
per hour, and it has a sensor on board. It’s not a weapon, okay?
But would [a treaty’s] language ban our ability to do space-based
surveillance? I would hope not!”

Is war in space inevitable?

Meanwhile, shifts in U.S. policy are giving China and Russia more
reasons for further suspicion. Congress has been pressing the U.S.
national security community to turn its attentions to the role of
offensive rather than defensive capabilities, even dictating that
most of the fiscal year 2015 funding for the Pentagon’s Space
Security and Defense Program go toward “development of offensive
space control and active defense strategies and capabilities.”

“Offensive space control” is a clear reference to weapons.
“Active defense” is much more nebulous, and refers to undefined
offensive countermeasures that could be taken against an attacker,
further widening the routes by which space might soon become
weaponized. If an imminent threat is perceived, a satellite or its
operators might preemptively attack via dazzling lasers, jamming
microwaves, kinetic bombardment or any other number of possible
methods.

“I hope to never fight a war in space,” Hyten says. “It’s bad
for the world. Kinetic [anti-satellite weaponry] is horrible for
the world,” because of the existential risks debris poses for all
satellites. “But if war does extend into space,” he says, “we have
to have offensive and defensive capabilities to respond with, and
Congress has asked us to explore what those capabilities would be.
And to me, the one limiting factor is no debris. Whatever you do,
don’t create debris.”

Technology to jam transmissions, for example, appears to
underpin the Air Force’s Counter Communications System, the U.S.’s
sole acknowledged offensive capability against satellites in
space. “It's basically a big antenna on a trailer, and how it
actually works, what it actually does, nobody knows,” Weeden says,
noting that, like most space security work, the details of the
system are top secret. “All we basically know is that they could
use it to somehow jam or maybe even spoof or hack into an
adversary’s satellites.”

For Krepon, the debate over the definitions of space weapons
and the saber-rattling between Russia, China and the U.S. is
unhelpfully eclipsing the more pressing issue of debris. “Everyone
is talking about purposeful, man-made objects dedicated to
warfighting in space, and it’s like we are back in the Cold War,”
Krepon says. “Meanwhile, there are about 20,000 weapons already up
there in the form of debris. They’re not purposeful—they’re
unguided. They’re not seeking out enemy satellites. They’re just
whizzing around, doing what they do.”

The space environment, he says, must be protected as a global
commons, similar to the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Space junk
is very easy to make and very hard to clean up, so international
efforts should focus on preventing its creation. Beyond the threat
of deliberate destruction, the risk of accidental collisions and
debris strikes will continue to grow as more nations launch and
operate more satellites without rigorous international
accountability and oversight. And as the chance of accidents
increases, so too does the possibility of their being
misinterpreted as deliberate, hostile actions in the high-tension
cloak-and-dagger military struggle in space.

“We are in the process of messing up space, and most people
don’t realize it because we can’t see it the way we can see fish
kills, algal blooms, or acid rain,” he says. “To avoid trashing
Earth orbit, we need a sense of urgency that currently no one has.
Maybe we’ll get it when we can’t get our satellite television and
our telecommunications, our global weather reports and hurricane
predictions. Maybe when we get knocked back to the 1950s, we’ll
get it. But by then it will be too late.”